


Largo

by applegnat



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-23
Updated: 2009-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 01:42:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/applegnat/pseuds/applegnat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is destiny's failed experiment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Largo

**Author's Note:**

> Written for finnygan's birthday in 2007.

Thetis lives by the sea.

Achilles is overcome by a sense of peace as he walks along the beach, sifting the sand through his bare toes. He carries his shoes in one hand and hitches up his kilt delicately with the other. Overhead the gulls are crying their welcome home. He's about to think that it isn't right to be this happy, then pushes the thought away. It comes back with the gull's next cry.

He squints at the light and hurries on to knock at the blue door, shoes grating on the glints of brine and fish scales. It's been four years since he was last here, painting it with Patroklos' help (kissing him in full view of the watching waves). It's faded now, stripped and peeling with the wind and salt, but still blue. And Thetis is still white, and her hair still the dry, delicate gold of sea-snakes and sand. To Achilles she is beautiful, even though she and he are both four years older than when they last met.

She doesn't hear his knock on the door, doesn't hear his canny footsteps springing along the floorboard, doesn't turn her head from the window as he comes in to her room. He has to touch her to become part of her world, take her fingers in his own to speak her language.

Her voice, when she speaks, is unnecessarily loud. "Achilles," she says, turning, her voice resounding like a foghorn in the wooden room. He squeezes her hand. Her face softens. "My little boy."

He faces her fully. "How are you, Mother?" he asks silently, his lips outlining the words like carven fruit.

She breaks into a smile. "Lonely," she says. "You?"

He shakes his head and hopes his eyes will speak to her.

She hesitates for one bare moment before opening her arms and folds him into an embrace.

Thetis is in turns called a goddess, a witch, a mad woman and a traitor. She has run away from people, her own husband in particular, all her life. They disturb her. This is contrary – but not very contrary – to the fact that she is the daughter of a man mightier than Agamemnon king of kings, and once sat at banquets which might have put the Tudor monarchy to shame, plying cutlery and diplomatic conversation in a manner worthy of their Victorian successors. (She is the reason Achilles knows which fork to pick up during which course at a dinner in Mycenae.) Thetis is more educated than most of the men at Achilles' father's court. She is also more easily frightened of cages and graves than most young animals in the stables.

An incident of violence soon after Achilles' birth left her permanently deaf, and free at last of the music of kitchen sinks and snores, she drifted away from big, blustery Peleus, who loves her still, but shares much of her straight-backed pride, and refuses to set his eyes on her again. This is the only common bond of their royalty. Thetis, too, refuses to meet her husband or her father's family, although she still owns the favours and the ears (oh, cruel pun) of the highest and mightiest of them.

She is Destiny's failed experiment, and finally, on the seashore, she has freed herself from its persistent clutches.

"What is Destiny, after all," she muses thoughtfully over her mulled wine, "but another name for Death."

Achilles at her feet shifts restlessly. Her aged, icy eyes fall on him and pierce his heart.

"What should I do?" he asks her.

She shrugs gracefully. "You know I've always encouraged you to make your own decisions," she begins.

"Ma," he says. "I will."

"Then – do."

"Do you want me to go?"

Her face wrinkles a moment, a helpless wave. Her voice drops to a whisper, like the sea lapping in to shore.

"I don't want to tell you," she says.

He puts his hand on her knee. "You didn't want me to have a sword four years ago."

"Four years ago," she tries to laugh. "Four years ago you were fourteen years old. You were still my baby, even though I tried to make you believe that we were just friends."

His lips quirk. He's not smiling, he's frowning.

"That reminds me," she says, in a voice that signifies a changing tide. "Your son and his mother were here to see me a while ago."

"Yeah. I mean - _yes_." he nods.

"They're quite well," she says carefully. "He's very clever. For a three-year old."

"I know." He doesn't. He hasn't seen his ex-fiancée or his son since little Neo's second birthday. _Neoptolemus, wise beyond his years._

"Do they know that you might go to Troy?"

"I haven't told anyone yet," he says. "I haven't made up my mind."

"Make it up fast," she says. "The gods will not wait for you, nor Agamemnon."

"But I don't know--" he begins, and stops.

She looks down at him and takes his hand then, and draws him to look out of her window.

"It's never happened to me before," he says uncertainly to the Aegean. She rests her head against the pane and watches his mouth.

"I always thought – it's been so easy to make decisions. Out on the streets I am called fleet-footed Achilles, but they know that I'm just as quick with my eyes, with my heart. I've never needed to stop and think before. And now – now it's even easier. A yes/no choice. Stay or go. Life or death. Chance or destiny."

She strokes his hair as he pauses, his eyes warring with the setting sun.

"What keeps you here?" she asks softly. "I know you aren't afraid."

"No," he says. "But Deidamia and Neo will be. Peleus. My lands, my folks. Patroklos." He pauses again. "You."

She shakes her head to say, _Not on my account._

They watch the sky come over dark.

"What is the ocean," Thetis wonders aloud, "but drop upon drop."

"Little drops of water," Achilles repeats automatically.

What is the ocean but individual drops of water. What is the world but a breath at a time.

 

"Achilles," she says suddenly, louder than ever. "Achilles."

"Yes, Mother?" He takes her lace-crafted hand, white and translucifying.

"No one will be there to die with you," she says. "Here, there, anywhere."

His brow furrows.

"I know," he says. "I know that."

"Remember it." Her voice crashes against the rocks of the shore, comes back to Achilles as a mighty whisper. "Your tomorrows are so uncertain in these times. If you go, at least something will be salvaged. Something will be sure."

"I never thought of it that way," he says awkwardly.

She hasn't been looking at him; she hasn't heard him. She closes her eyes and turns her face against the wind.

"Glory," she breathes, out into the cold starry air.

\--

"I'm probably going, after all," he finally tells her as he leaves before daybreak. "Patroklos – Patroklos thinks we should."

She looks at him oddly, then nods and kisses his brow. "You're so young," she says, and for the first time since evening her voice is soft and measured, like a human mother's voice. "You don't know anything."

"Goodbye, Ma," he says.

"But you'll have enough time to learn, I suppose," she says.

"Yes," he says, not really understanding.

"I'll come to see you."

"Ma – thanks. I don't think you should."

She places a fond hand against his cheek.

"I _am_ your mother, aren't I," she says. Achilles thinks that now is not the time to bring up the fact that she's never said it quite that way before.

It all worked out for the best after all, he thinks in the car, driving back home. He's never really understood her. They've never belonged in each other's world.


End file.
